


richard iii

by 13letters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Adultry, F/M, Growing Up, Honey, Joffrey is his own warning, Jousting, Pain, Pining, Suffering, Tourneys, but nothing is graphic, canon-divergent, good times at Casterly Rock, honestly not as depressing as it sounds! people are generally happy!, non-linear, where Jaime learns to be a good man and a kind father, where Sansa is a Queen of Stone, where Tommen is a true knight
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 04:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15744369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: "Do you love me?""What?""Do you love me? Do you love your King?"





	1. i

It's very poetic, she thinks, in the ironic, tortured way that has become her legacy.  
  
She is a (near) maiden trapped in a tower by an evil Queen (Mother). She receives nightly visits from her truest knight (jailer) as he professes his love (as commanded) and promises to see her to safety (marriage).   
  
"When you are Queen," the Hound says, coarse, thick. "He will not be able to strike you." He's ripped a yard of cloth from the hem of his cloak to act as makeshift handkerchiefs for her blood.  
  
"I will still deserve it," she obediently whispers, all at once appearing so hollow and so thin in her pretty pink gown that Sandor actually begins to worry for her health -- the bits he can't see behind the bruises. Her soul.   
  
It's only the next day that they've realized she's trying to starve herself to death. Three months prior, she had meant to throw herself from the window like the Lady Ashara Dayne, but Sansa is only so brave. Sansa is only so determined, so weak that her distended tummy swells so roundly that Sandor actually has to ask her, pity her, unknowingly shame her so profoundly that she _cries_ into her hands:  "Little bird, are you pregnant?"  
  
"Sweet dove," Cersei murmurs, as sweet as honey and just as coaxing. She curls her fingers through Sansa's hair and tries to not think about her own life at sixteen, and then she's pulling harshly at the summer-colored roots. "Should Joffrey execute you now, Sansa? Are you trying to tell us that you feel the guilt of your family's treason so strongly that the shame has made you suicidal?"  
  
"No," she tries to protest, she loves the King, she does; King Renly Baratheon.   
  
Quite possibly, the most beautiful man in the Seven Kingdoms. Once, she was blessed enough to hear him laugh just as her life was changing forever in the Lannisters' hands, so that siren call, that brief moment of fondness that can transcend land masses and battlefields to a foolish, girlish daydream, _oh_.   
  
One day, he and his army and Ser Loras will overtake King's Landing with gallantry and goodness and grace. They will weld peace instead of their swords, and Renly will run up each step to see she is freed and safe and whole, and as he is overcome by passion and emotion and regret, he will sweetly kiss her and promise forever to keep her safe. She will believe him, and she won't ever be sorry.   
  
"Renly?" Sandor snarks, scoffing like she's truly as stupid as she now feels.   
  
They've arranged an accord, though; she eats enough to remain strong, and he finishes the rest. They both pretend it's meaningless, but she was present and ashamedly quiet when Joffrey threw a raw steak into a silver bowl and bid his dog eat like the animal he is.   
  
The look on his face when the Hound did, however -- when in annoyance, Joffrey angrily declared that _fine_ , Sandor can enjoy all of his meals as such since he ate the meat so ravenously, well.  
  
"Why don't you leave?" Sansa asked him.  
  
Sandor's laugh wasn't much of a laugh. "Why don't you?"  
  
"You don't think Renly will win?"  
  
"I don't think he'll marry a prisoner."  
  
"I will be the Lady of Winterfell."  
  
"You don't think Robb will win?" he throws back at her, bitter, intending to hurt.  
  
Realizing what she's said, how much Cersei has meant, Sansa turns away and silently weeps. There's a plan that's in motion, one she's naïve in -- for good reason. Come the treaty with the Boltons and the Freys ( _Stand together; Get up, Robb, run_ ), when Sansa is the only Stark and Tully left standing, she will be the Lady of Winterfell as well as of Riverrun. She will be a contender for the title Lady of the Vale of Arryn, for kings are dropping like flies, and she is a pawn atop many different boards. 

.  
  
"Where is Sansa?" asks Tommen curiously, ruddy and rosy and oblivious, so innocent, _oh_ , he will hate himself someday for committing the crime that is compliance. Someday, he will rage and triumph and plead and love:  each, but now, he is seven years old, and Sansa is twelve.   
  
"My little cub," Cersei hurries to soothe, already wary for how her baby will react to his elder brother's patronizing sigh and cruel scowl. "Sansa's feeling ill, I'm afraid. She won't join us for our meal this morning."  
  
"She's always sick," Tommen objects, adult intuition yet to be regarded. "We must help her," he tells his mum.  
  
He's so gallant and good-natured already, Cersei thinks, as doting as Jaime could be when the world was kinder and her wrinkles younger. It's fondness alone that has her agreeing as she rounds up her littles like a mother hen wrangling her chicks to feed, and so with a glance to Joffrey's petulance, a hand in Tommen's, her arm linked with Myrcella's, she muses, "Yes, what can we do to help her?"  
  
.  
  
Sansa is always ill, Tommen will learn.   
  
.  
  
He is seventeen years old, and his lady fair has been absent from each meal, tea, court, and festivity the four days he's been allowed home.  
  
"Where's Lady Sansa?" he asks, eating his half of Loras' scone over breakfast.   
  
"Why do you care," Joffrey simpers. Similar to when they were children, Joffrey makes _that_ face, the one that sulks and scorns the pets Tommen keeps when he's received no inkling of affection from the puppies and kittens that lavish his siblings.   
  
("I'm sure kitten Pounce will cheer her up," he told his mum. "Might I show her the new litter of kittens?"  
  
"Take Ser Sandor with you, if you must.")  
  
It's the same look that warns Tommen of a threat.  
  
"I'm only asking after my good-sister," he excuses, trying so confoundedly hard to resist lowering his gaze from his brother's.  
  
"Why don't you care about your wife's whereabouts?" asks Tyrion, boredly eyeing Joffrey over his wine. "I haven't heard her laugh in a while. Where is she?"  
  
"She's ill," Cersei smiles, sweet, thick honey. "Her head has been giving her trouble, poor dear. The pain has gotten so dreadful that she can scarcely do more than lay in the dark."  
  
"How awful," he says, genuinely thinking none of it. "Has the Maester attended her?"  
  
"Why would he, my sweet? It's only a headache."  
  
.  
  
"Weak ankles, I'm afraid," Cersei excuses a day and an afternoon later. "She tripped upon the cobble and will be bedridden until the morning."  
  
"Truly?" He glances up to her tower no quicker than he looks to his mum's sweet, smiling face. "I suppose you'll be an adequate replacement," he quips, grinning all cheek, all beautifully-inherited dimples.   
  
"I should think," Cersei laughs, linking her arm through his so they can stroll. Gods, his bones are turning to lead. Then:  "Goodness, Jaime," she calls him, so quick and light, "you've gotten so tall."  
  
.  
  
"Where is she?" he hushes, stalking the corridor like so much a lion that Loras holds up both his hands in a tired, trying way.  
  
"I told you that I've inquired. Her maid merely told me that she's sick with some sort of condition. They say she mourns for Theon Greyjoy."  
  
"Her father's ward?"  
  
"Yes," answers Loras, just as quiet. "Apparently, she loved him. She had hopes they would marry before -- well, _before_ ," he frowns, crossing his arms. "I had no idea. They say she's suffering a broken heart."  
  
"That's ludicrous," murmurs Tommen, doubtful but.. "Are those rumors true?"  
  
"I don't pretend to know."  
  
"You haven't seen her in weeks, then?"  
  
"A month, I believe," Loras whispers, trailing to soft and then quiet as a servant infringes upon their seclusion to deliver linens to the closet he leans on. "She seemed to be fairing well, though. Her people love her."  
  
"As they should," says Tommen, and Loras shrugs.   
  
"I don't know anymore. She's too ill to come to the feast, too mournful."  
  
"But no one can be that sick all of the time," he hushes, moving by muscle memory only for something to keep him busy -- rasping his palm against his stubble, pressing his cheek against his shoulder, straightening his spine and squaring his jaw; _Stand like a man_ , Tywin snaps in memory, "Father," Tommen calls Loras, only a tad ironically.   
  
"Don't you dare start that."  
  
"Do something," Tommen laughs, quite dramatic as he presses his forehead against the wall. "You're her father by marriage now, too. Aren't you the head of this home?"  
  
Bless him, Loras actually chokes. "I've tried. I asked after her everyday for two months. If she wasn't sick, she had a headache, was sensitive to light, had belly pain, an infected throat. Perhaps it is her heart," he almost inaudibly ventures, going back to spring and all it meant to him. "It isn't difficult to imagine."  
  
After a beat of careful, slow consideration, a heavy apology hanging in the air, Tommen repeats, "Theon Greyjoy?" like he's offended.   
  
.  
  
With one fate different, though, comes the slow-spread changes of peace and calm and secrecy inherent.   
  
The Hound doesn't curse Joffrey and abandon his lady at the Battle of Blackwater Bay. He stays (he sees something in the fire, he thinks), but he stays, and subconsciously, congruently --  
  
Self-preservation warns Tommen away from the sticky sweetness of flower-scented vials of poison and its safe edible counterparts. When he consumes sugar or syrup or honey in any form now, he feels as if he's dying, and it is a cruel, cruel trick.   
  
The first plate Sansa completely finished when she began eating again was a plate full of honeyed rice and lemon cakes and sugared plums and sweet biscuits, all courtesy of boyish, impressionable Tommen. Now, his stomach churns when his mum offers him so much as sugar for his tea, and he won't learn why his conscience tries to save him everyday until he's twenty-four.   
  
As a result, of course, Gendry never has to hold Arya's shaking, raging, screaming body as she begs _burn in hell!_  before collapsing against him like she's dead, too. Instead, Gendry will ask her, "Isn't this enough?" in his quiet, intent way, imploring her stay for the safety of sanctuary instead of the mass grave that awaits her and all named Stark.   
  
"Isn't what?" she'll harshly wonder, so severe yet not as malicious.   
  
A woman's wrath in a girl's timid form, when Gendry simply answers, "Me," in a tone that finally commands and holds, Arya won't understand him, but she will see ten and thirteen and fifteen and sixteen as the Seven Kingdoms rise and fall and the Brotherhood reigns, as hope starts to press between her rib bones and soften the goodness in her that has prevailed upon the bitterness.   
  
In this world, see, Arya learns that life must find a way to breathe, and she will recognize that her life has been changed for the better by the goodness she has known as opposed to the vengeance. She will never see Needle again in this life, but Gendry first kisses her when she is sixteen and her hair has grown to her waist and he is sweaty in the midday sun, and it is honey on his tongue; it is Jaime's wish, and it is everything Sansa has ever wanted.  
  
Arya will give Gendry four children someday, and when they are both old and gray and sated, they will see their nineteenth grandchild born into a world better than their own.   
  
When Sansa turned sixteen, Joffrey told her that she belongs to only him, and he sought to prove so by branding her with his Lannister signet ring. After a short struggle, cuts across his knuckles, purple on her pale cheek, he did.  
  
He picked up the burning gold ring with clamps while Trant held her down.   
  
The neckline of her gown was torn so he could mark her breast, and he was laughing when Sandor happened to be passing by; he was chortling madly because she screamed from the pain.   
  
And Sandor, he   
  
was a child.   
  
They were just   
  
children.  
  
Once, he threw Joffrey into a wall because he tried to hold Tommen's four-year-old head over an open flame.  
  
And even now, even as cinders smolder into Sansa's flesh and stain her skin an angry red, she is trying not to cry while he slowly enters their room. She is trying not to cry when he takes Joffrey's throat in his hands and feels his life halt when Trant draws his blade.   
  
"Don't you ever learn?" Sandor snarls, snapping his teeth, shaking him, shaking -- nearly crying.   
  
Only, Joffrey is invincible. Instead of cowering in the fear that motivated him to behave as a child, he remains rigid and nonchalant. He can do no wrong. He is the King, and as if he's proud, he defiantly raises his chin when anger abandons Sandor and festers into something less tranquil, more heartbroken.   
  
"Is this how it will be?" The Hound asks Joffrey. After almost twenty years, this is less a question, more reluctant acceptance. "If your son or daughter displeases you so, will you burn them, too?"  
  
"Unlikely," Joffrey mutters, succinct, another slap. "I doubt she can give me children, dry as she is. Frigid."  
  
"She's not barren."  
  
"Isn't she?" Joffrey shouldn't seem so bored, considering he needs a strong successor. "Four years, and she's yet to present me with a baby. If I were ignorant, I would wonder if she's poisoned my sons and expelled them before they could live. I would wonder if she possessed some ancient, unholy magics that Wildling savages know. Can't be true, though. Sansa?"  
  
"No, my king," she sighs, a mere whispered breath. Her skin pulses, and her cheek stings. "I've tried to give you children, my love," she says, as sincerely as she can lie while still burning through the floor, burning the entire Keep to ashes and rubble, ruin, _fade_. "You know I try."  
  
"Yes," Joffrey begrudges. He licks his dry, pale lips. "Well, then. Escort my queen to her tower, Ser Trant, if you please."  
  
"What?" the Hound wonders, practically biting. "You won't allow her to watch her husband duel on her nameday? Not even a kiss for luck? It's her celebration."  
  
.  
  
On Tommen's sixteenth nameday, he competed in the joust.  
  
He became oh-so acutely aware that the people at Court hadn't seen him joust since he was a boy of seven, since he was unseated but rose up and tried again (yes, he's been fighting all of his life), so the notion that he has something to prove -- that he is everything his father and uncle were (was) at sixteen and invincible, heroic, deadly, and true -- is intoxicating.   
  
He wants to conquer and prove his people aren't false in their cheers. He wants to ride the wave of this celebration and selfishly have his brother frowning harder.   
  
Tyrion turns a traitor and bets on Bronn over his blood, but he winks at Tommen when he confesses this and admits he bet double the crowns on him against Petyr's predictions.   
  
Because Joffrey's reign will have resulted in peace, Ser Beric Dondarrion rides, too. The years haven't proven kind to him, but as a pardon, as compensation, he's unseated by Loras Tyrell to the contradictory cries of the women watching. Both men are the loves of their lives, so oh, what is to divide and conquer?  
  
With Beric comes his smith, though, come Trystane Martell and Myrcella, comes the Lady Brienne, and she honestly faints when she sees him:  Renly Baratheon, nodding politely to her as he passes by.   
  
It is Jaime who comes to her, who in this crowd of a hundred intently found her as if he wasn't directly staring at her since she joined the celebrations, and gently stirs her conscious, whispers her name like _gods_.  _Come back, love. Return to me._ "I didn't think you knew how to faint," he tells her, and twice that afternoon, her heart splinters whole. It is flesh memory and everything wanting.   
  
Cella waves her golden handkerchief at Trystane when he enters the final competition in swordplay, but old gods and the new, he drops to his knees before her on the dais, looks up at her through his dark lashes and says with so much conviction that the entire arena ceases breath:  "If this match is my end, know I will die with your name on my lips. Know I will carry you with me in my heart, my sweet."  
  
"Know," Myrcella replies, or _no_ , she says. Tommen doesn't know, for he's just realized his stoic Queen is crying. "I carry you," she contradicts, quite possibly shattering into stardust and wonder and light, sheer brilliance that is only heightened when Trystane rises up and kisses her, open-mouthed and hot, in front of everyone they know.   
  
Cersei looks away peevishly, but Tyrion and Jaime, on either side of Tommen, they laugh and holler with the best of them, sweep in momentum the joy that consumes Trystane and each movement, each stroke he leads for victory.   
  
Unsurprisingly, he wins.     
  
Less so, is Tommen's victory. Jaime is standing and screaming and silently shouting it, _my boy_  because he _is_ , because he is him and everything he wanted to be and more at sixteen and ambitious, untouchable, cocksure, and glorious, victorious, strong;  
  
the Mountain falls. (The sun sets in the East; Trystane _screams_  in the uproar. Burn in hell. _Burn in hell!_  against Myrcella's soft, gentle arms.)  
  
Loras stops breathing because Cersei has instinctively gripped his arm in her worry. Joffrey is indignant as Ser Gregor is silent as he stands, as stoically, so slowly, he pulls the point of Tommen's lance from the crux of his shoulder.   
  
Blood starts to drip from him, and it is a mercy he is much too weak to contest a would-be King. He is led away by Qyburn a tad too obediently, but the riotous cheers of triumph, the cries of good fortune and praises be, grow to little more than white noise when Jaime proudly takes Tommen in his arms and shouts in his ringing ears, "My boy! You could best Ser Arthur Dayne, I'm sure!"  
  
"Tommen!" Cella gushes all over him, beaming and proud as she pulls off his helmet, smiles at his stunned, confused face. "Don't forget to crown your Queen."  
  
"My Queen," Tommen repeated, for just then, dazed by victory and half-certain Ser Gregor would dead him where he sat upon his horse Lemondrop, he was motionless and yet soaring. He had seen eyes intent on killing him in the name of vengeance yet remained cheered for and loved as screams quieted in a crescendo and then softened entirely to whispers and murmurs and gasps when he took the crown of blue wintry roses and laid it gently upon his Queen Sansa's lap. 

.  
  
"Sit, sit," Tywin tells him. Now that the kitchens have fetched the right tray of goodies, the meeting can commence. Tommen, water, bread, and jam. "We're here to discuss your future."  
  
("You will not take my baby boy from me!" Cersei is raging, screaming, crying atop the stairs -- crumbling with defeat because _oh_ , mercy. Is this justice? Is it? "You've already taken Cella from me. You can't have Tommen, Father!"  
  
"Selfish, incorrigible woman," Tywin condescends, and in the corner of the room,   
  
"They scare me, too," Jaime confesses, kneeling so he's eye level to Tommen.  
  
"They hate each other."  
  
"No," says Jaime -- a lie. One Tommen lets him keep. "They're only having a discussion.")  
  
"Where's Sansa?" he asks, eight years old and terribly precocious. He is Tywin's favorite, though, and as a result, he is to be sent away far from King's Landing and Cersei and Joffrey and ruin. The Rock, perhaps, but that isn't true strategy.   
  
"In her quarters, I assume. I'm told she's unwell. She's become a woman which means she will wed your brother soon. Do you know what that means?"  
  
"She will be Queen," Tommen answers, too young to really grasp such an abstract concept.   
  
"I meant," says Tywin, raising an eyebrow, what Tommen will later know to interpret as a smile, "what will that mean to you."  
  
"I will be the King's brother."  
  
"That's right."  
  
"I could join his Kingsguard," Tommen suggests, already infatuated with the idea of his Uncle Jaime:  golden, true, brave, and skilled. One day, he'll be even better. "I could protect Joff and Sansa."  
  
"You could," agrees Tywin. He's seconds away from an aneurysm, but best keep composure. "What else?"  
  
("I'm allowing you the courtesy of choosing where your son will grow up," Tywin states. With vitriol, his palm hits the table, the scrolls, forcefully. "Shall he go to the Twins?"  
  
She's genuinely crying, and her hot, angry words sting like her teeth upon her hand, the red indents she leaves broken into her flesh. " _No_."  
  
"Pyke, then."  
  
"I will never forgive you, Father. Never."  
  
"Then Tommen will leave for the Vale of Arryn tomorrow," Tywin orders evasively, blinking at her. "Are you satisfied?")  
  
"Marry," says Tommen. In that tactless way a child has, he's honest yet flushing. "I think I would like that, Grandfather."  
  
"Yes?" Tywin hushes back, leaning down as if to maintain strict confidence. "And who are you considering?"  
  
"It's quite funny."  
  
"Go on."  
  
("Uncle," asks Tommen, pulling at his jerkin since he's no longer the focus, since Cersei is looking to Jaime with eyes that scream.   
  
"Send him to Casterly Rock," offers Jaime after a short, breathy moment -- panic within him that deafens to a poignant moment of clarity, yes, upon his honor. "Yes, send him with family, Father."  
  
"Tyrion won't inherit the Rock. You know this."  
  
"Then send him with me," he swallows; the sun is suddenly so heavy. Almost a score of years are pressing against his spine and breaking his back, finally forcing him to bend. "I'll retire. I'll Lord the Rock and keep Tommen, teach him. Love him," he tacts on, for his baby boy is holding his hand.  
  
"You will marry, as well," Tywin mandates.)  
  
"Sansa," Tommen admits quietly.  
  
Unwavering, Tywin just nods. ("Done.") He tries not to show his surprise or consideration but wonders if this child expects him to laugh. "I see. She's to marry Joffrey, however. We must find you someone more suitable. How would you feel about visiting another keep and being ward to some other lord?"  
  
("No," Cersei objects. Truly, she is more possessive than jealous. "They will stay here. Both of them will stay here, Father."  
  
"It's a pity Margaery Tyrell was wed to Renly. I can't have you marry a traitor's bride."  
  
"My son married a traitor."  
  
"Your son is not my son. Your son is not heir to the Lannister fortune. His is the fury, remember?"  
  
Gods, how Cersei seethes. "Hear me roar."  
  
"Any requests?" asks Tywin, ignoring Cersei in order to pay his debts. Pliability for generosity; "I won't ask again," he tells Jaime, raising an eyebrow, leaning forward, accepting his prodigal son in a manner too reminiscent of forgiving without blinking. "If you've a particular bride in mind, tell me now, and I shall see it in order if she's appropriate."  
  
"If she's not?"  
  
"Try me," says Tywin. His vision is beginning to stretch across all of Westeros.   
  
For Cersei, Jaime considers naming the youngest Frey girl, a child of two or three. This will grant them a decade at most, will be the lesser of two evils, will be something that keeps Tyrion laughing for the rest of his life, but the cynical part of him, the portion of his soul that hates his father and his sister for what he is doing, that part of him considers naming Daenerys Targaryen.   
  
It is his heart, though, that speaks, his head barely conscious of it, but Cersei spills her goblet of wine across the marbled floor.  
  
His father only stares at him, hard. Jaime is once again sixteen and chided and burdened. There is a sword in his spine, wildfire in his right hand, potential in the other. "What was that?"  
  
"The Lady Brienne of Tarth.")  
  
"I should like to stay here," says Tommen, like he's not truly certain.   
  
"Is that what you want?"  
  
"How could I know?"  
  
"You're a Lannister," Tywin says. Eight years from now, Tommen will try to dissect each syllable of that statement to discern if his grandfather knew the truth after all. He will wonder if it was a warning even then, the most subtle of cautionary tales, but the truth will rest easily with the dead. "You're a Baratheon. You want to do what is right as your sense of duty compels you."  
  
"Yes," whispers Tommen, really just believing each contrite word. "I do."  
  
"This is what you will tell your mother:  
  
.

  
"Uncle Jaime treats me better than I deserve," Tommen writes to his mum.   
  
His is eleven now, "And," he writes to his Uncle Tyrion, "I do not know for sure, but I think he found peace amidst the sunset and the waves. He took me to the cliffs where we would jump together, and as he floated as the stars began to fall into the sea, he looked as if he could finally breathe. He looked like he could forgive."  
  
"Forgive whom?" Sansa asks, a mere chip in the façade that is her destiny as the Queen of Stone. She is composed and radiant and nonchalant and intent, and her dignity is all a lady should possess; her demeanor is ice as it is frosted upon a wintry window with a furnace providing heat.  
  
"Himself, I should think," Tyrion supposes. "Perhaps all of us. My Queen, are you sure you don't wish to dance? I'm sure I could find someone that --"  
  
"No," Sansa refuses with a delicate sort of force. "If my husband's men wish to disrespect me by alienating me, then let the rest feel their pity harden to shame. I will sit here alone all night if I must."  
  
"Then you have more courage than I. If you change your mind, know I wouldn't mind a jolly dance myself."  
  
Jaime doesn't read to Tommen or assist him with his penmanship or literacy. See, the once Jaime tried, when numbers squiggled upon the page and blurred into other letters and numbers, Jaime threw the book into the fire as a strike against his suppressed childhood trauma. He took Tommen fishing after that, and not long after, his son became his best friend.   
  
"Imagine if you had been King," Tommen makes him pretend, all knobby knees and his plain night shirt and a laugh that keeps delaying his bedtime half hour by half hour.   
  
Jaime is no better, for he lays opposite Tommen so they are head-to-foot. They are relatively alone in Casterly Rock, and the new sort of independence has brought life and small joy and purpose to both of their lives. In the daylight, they chase monsters and swim like fish and make castles and dragons in the sand, and at night, they dream happier dreams than they had previously known, and occasionally, they relay their dreams and all of Tommen's wishes because Jaime enjoys talking to this boy and learning the sort of man he will grow to be.   
  
He enjoys being father, mother, uncle, brother, nursemaid, confidant, and friend to Tommen, and in return, Tommen loves him back. For the first time in his life, love is easy and unconditional.

Well, for the second time in his life.

"Imagine if you'll be King," Jaime throws back. On his chest, Ser Pounce purrs in a light sleep. It gives him an idea, and he laughs out loud, nudges Tommen's shoulder with his foot. "I will have all of Westeros calling you Tommen, the Lion King. Lords from all over will present you with lion furs and pelts to furnish your keep."  
  
"That would be very grand, indeed," Tommen grins, proof that while those in this story don't get happy endings, they do necessarily never get exactly what they wish for.  
  
"Your people will love you," Jaime continues, so undeniably sure. "They would."  
  
"Would they have loved you?"  
  
"Not for a while."  
  
"How do you mean?" Tommen sighs, a sound that turns into a loud, tired yawn.   
  
"I haven't even liked myself in a long while," he admits. Then, to lighten the intensity that's just settled:  "You won't like me very much either, I'm afraid. You're going to start training with your left hand tomorrow."

"Uncle!"

"I don't like you very much either, now," calls Brienne from the door. "Do you know what time it is? Do you know at what time tomorrow I will expect both of you awake and coherent?"

"Too early," Jaime quips, and sleepily, Tommen yawn-laughs because he is ten years old and doesn't know it yet -- the path ahead.

Next week, Sansa Stark, the Lady of Winterfell, the almost Lady of Riverrun as soon as Ser Gregor slaughters the Blackfish, will be crowned Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> " _Little bird_ ," Tommen says as some twisted sort of mockery, as rebellious a display of disgust as he dares. Only, because he is nineteen and tall and charming and strong, he sounds as if he's calling her his lover instead of a curse. "Will she die in that tower, do you suppose?"

"She's not a prisoner," Tyrion tells him with a Lannister's certainty, "unless you believe she is."

"I don't follow."

"I'm not doing my best to lead you," Tyrion frowns, gently patting his favorite nephew. "Let me try again: Do you believe Lady Sansa is a prisoner?"

"She's kept in a tower, Uncle," Tommen frets. "She's been there for as long as I can remember."

"You don't remember much of Winterfell?"

"I was seven," he frowns, about to cross his arms before something in him remembers to stand straight -- to posture himself as a man. A rich, noble, capable man. Gods. Tywin is poisonous with superiority, and Tommen _hates_. "I remember the feasts and then the mourning. That poor boy."

"Yes," Tyrion echoes, trying to discern how much Tommen knows or not. "That poor boy."

"I think cages can be expansive," says Tommen, slowly.

"A cage is something other than a prison."

" _Little bird_ ," Tommen says as some twisted sort of mockery, as rebellious a display of disgust as he dares. Only, because he is nineteen and tall and charming and strong, he sounds as if he's calling her his lover instead of a curse. "Will she die in that tower, do you suppose?"

"I visit her often," Tyrion assures him. "We have tea and stare down at the passersby and judge them."

"How kind."

"It used to make her laugh," he shrugs, both idle and so very sorry. "I suspect it only makes her wistful now if she feels how you think."

"You don't believe she does?"

"Prisoner or not, Tommen, she is still Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She is a queen of mercy, and she is adored."

"Yes, by all except Joffrey."

Something in Tommen's tone makes Tyrion pause. Then understand and simultaneously dread, "No," he says, "no, Tommen, know, you mustn't." It's almost comical -- almost, if Tommen wouldn't have to die for it.

"I fear I do."

"Gods' sakes, then you will stop it, boy."

"I'd just as easily stop the sun from setting, Uncle."

"Dear gods. You can't. You've barely seen her, Tommen. You don't love her."

"I write to her," he murmurs, choosing just now to stare pensively out towards the garden.

"And?"

Tommen is sincere enough to smile almost bashfully. "Of course, she writes back."

"Of course," Tyrion seizes. "Is that the extent of your relationship?"

"How do you mean?" wonders Tommen, but whatever game of deceit he's playing at, he's blushing. There's a soft red that spreads from his neck to his face, and it will kill him. There will be red cut into his throat, and what will he have died for? Love? _Fool_ , Tyrion wants to cry.

"I mean," he hushes, forceful and deliberate, "that Sansa is with child. Is the child yours?"

.

"Mum," greets Tommen. "Lover," he calls Loras, and his hug is the warmest welcome to King's Landing he's received since he arrived: open-mouthed laughter, closed eyes. "I've missed you!"

"How was your journey?" Loras asks, drawing back enough to look at him. "Gods, how much taller will you grow?"

"Taller than a Clegane," he quips. "Ser Sandor, will you embrace me?"

"Not today."

"Mum?"

"You look well, Tommen," she curtly dismisses, smiling so simpering and sweet.

"You look well," Loras echoes, glancing to Jaime with a raised brow as if to ask MAY I? "My Lady," he says as he kisses her hand. "Marriage looks radiant on you even still."

"You're very kind, Ser Loras," Brienne says. It's a delicate thread, the fate they once may have shared. It has both of them silent for only a breath; it is Renly smiling, the fluttering of breeze that lilts across a silk curtain at Loras' right side.

"Brother," Loras calls Jaime, and Cersei will hate him for how they both laugh and embrace like friends, _brothers_ , with no inkling of jealousy or malice.

("You've poisoned him against me," she spat at him, teeth bared, nails like claws. Tommen was fourteen, and he never asked to see or speak with his mother.

"No," said Jaime with startling clarity. "You poisoned him.")

The years have been bitter to her. Wrinkles age and crease her face, and her position as a Queen of Beauty is long abdicated.

"Where's Sansa?"

"The gardens."

"The _where_?" Tommen, bless him, is actually surprised. "She's out of doors? She's walking the grounds?"

"I'll escort you to her," Sandor gruffly answers. "She'll be required to her confinement soon."

"Her confinement? Confinement?"

"For her health," Cersei surmises cooly. "Isolation mends her heart and has her reassessing her priorities."

"Which would be?" he demands, shaking off Jaime's gentle arm. "What is the purpose?"

"It pleases the King."

"And you enforce these orders?" he asks the Hound, gods, turning on him like a viper. "Why?"

"What pleases the King pleases me."

"I beg your pardon?" Tommen demands, actually pinching the bridge of his nose. "Say that once more, or let your soul be a feast for the gods."

Sandor actually cracks a smile. "If she wishes it, you may accompany her to her quarters."

Cersei stiffens. "He may not."

"Sister," Jaime says, his voice hard. She must stop intentionally trying to hurt his son.

"Cersei," Tommen actually calls her. "Do you presume to keep me in a tower of my own? Will you hold me against my will? Bar the door and the windows?"

Even though his tone was more dry than vindictive, Cersei still inhales in sharp outrage. "You would let him speak to me so?" she directs at Jaime. "Will you disrespect me so, as well?"

"Who am I to correct him?" Then more succinctly, in boldness with a dark intensity that makes Tyrion actually cease breath, "You mistake me for his father."

"Oh," says Loras unconvincingly. "Don't speak to your mother like that, Tommen."

"Of course," he says, but why wouldn't he? Mothers teach their sons. Everything cruel and bitter and hateful in him was learned from her. "I'll see Sansa, now."

.

"Is she our prisoner?"

"Why would you think that?" asked Cersei with that barbed tone, that biting curiosity that's gentle and motherly and reproachful all at once. She's stopped walking to Court because he's stopped, but here surrounded by various lords and ladies who tread on gossip like theatrics like heads on a spike, this was neither the time or the place. "Lady Sansa is a guest here for her own protection, Tommen. This has been explained to you."

"Mum," he protested, only seven eight years old and still susceptible to her pets and suffocating ways and murmurs of  _little cub_. "Then why's she always locked away?"

"Why does Cella keep her prettiest dolls on the highest shelves in her room?" She's asked this like it's a jest, a fun riddle, and with her hand in his, gods, they actually laughed together. Tommen actually laughed. One day, he will burn through and through and smolder to ash and hold Sansa's broken body in his hands while he begs _forgive me; I'm so sorry, I didn't know; I never meant; what have they done to us, baby; baby_ , gods, Tommen will scream, and his will be justice and fury and accountability and regret so searing that it's a brand upon his skin. It is gravel upon a grave, because Cersei asked him, "Why will butchers break the legs of chickens, little cub?"

"So they don't run away!" he knew enough to infer, laughing, heartless.

He stepped on only the blue stones of the cobble when they made the rest of the way to his brother's coronation.


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The King's wishes are my wishes," Tommen says. But in the same breath, as he turns as if he isn't directly gazing at whom he's indirectly been staring at all evening, "You should dance with her," he tells Jon before he can help it. "Sansa," he clarifies. "You should dance with her."

When she is twenty and two, the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch rides to King's Landing for a celebratory obligation.  
  
There is still peace in the midst of King Joffrey's reign, but as with each aspect of his crown, the strides he takes towards progress and success are at the feet of great men. Peace between the Free Folk and Westerosi have not come from Joffrey's kindness but from Jon Snow's mercy.   
  
It is Joffrey's mercy, though, that allows Jon's stay in King's Landing. It is his grace that has delegated men from his guard to join the Watch and man the Wall; it is his honor that does not see Eddard Stark's bastard executed, and it is his love for his lady wife that allows the siblings to reunite before the Iron Throne.  
  
Half of Jaime is terrified for Jon standing there where his grandfather and uncle were slaughtered, but Tommen understands it, he does.   
  
When he had the honor ( _privilege_ , Joff said) of being knighted by the King, Tommen actually laughed so hard that he was crying genuine tears of disbelief and comic irony, "No," he told his mum, Ser Sandor, Jaime, everyone that listed, "no, and certainly not in any of the seven hells. Joffrey could kill me. He would!"  
  
"He is your brother," Cersei protested. "He'd never," she said unconvincingly, but Loras only grimaced in cautionary warning.   
  
The Hound said like gravel, "I'll snap his neck before he can try," and it's almost sad, that. "I'll be standing right next to you."  
  
"Brother," Tommen called him, gracious, sincere, reaching for his plated arm. Sandor smiled all he ever manages, the furrow of his right brow, but still. "I can't rest at my knees before him while he stands over me with a sword. I know him. The temptation will be too strong. He'll say his weapon slipped. Ladies everywhere will weep. Papa will embrace me in the afterlife, laughing."  
  
More aggravated than anything, Cersei fixed her gaze on Jaime. "You'd allow him to break tradition because he's a coward?"  
  
"I've fought with him," Jaime protested. "And Tommen is Ser Arthur Dayne. He is Ser Duncan. He is Barristan Selmy," and anything but the Smiling Knight; everything good and better. "He is Lady Brienne," he smiled. "He's one of the greatest swordspersons I've ever seen already. He's no coward."  
  
"What if he does kill me?"  
  
"Gods' sakes. He is your brother, cub."  
  
All the same, Tommen hesitated before he bowed his head to his brother. He almost stood and stopped the ceremony, but he couldn't -- not even when blood started to blot his neck because Joff broke his skin and laughed.  
  
Jon leaves the throne room alive, though. He kneels and rises and doesn't look at Sansa and goes; he does everything the Hound tells him to, and he doesn't tell her when they're alone, at least not yet, that he saw her.   
  
Arya.   
  
"Can you spare any men?" he asks Jaime.   
  
And Jaime doesn't think Bran. He thinks penitence and mercy and honor, but he sees Tommen across the dais with some lass he's failing at attempting to woo, so he winces just for the hell of it. "Take that one."  
  
"Prince Tommen? Ser Tommen, I mean. I mean --"  
  
"Tommen," Jaime says.   
  
Like he's hearing the voice of Baelor the Blessed from beyond his grace, Tommen looks around in paranoia, seeking the voice of his addressee.   
  
"If that was permission, I might."  
  
"If he wants to take the Black, I won't stop him."  
  
"I could use you, too," says Jon, and it's less estranged now that it's been a near decade, now that they're both bastards. "I've changed the celibacy strictures."  
  
"Could I receive conjugal visits?" Jaime cracks.  
  
"There's no longer a gender restriction. Bring Lady Brienne, if you wish. Does she like the cold?"  
  
"Her hands are always cold," he says, half-pleased and nearly smiling. All these years, and he's still learning his wife like a language. Tongues and soft sounds, _sweetling, sweetheart, soul_.   
  
"Did you call for me, Uncle?" asks Tommen, polite yet mirthful, leaning towards Jon to avoid collision with the whirling lords and ladies on the floor.   
  
"I've volunteered your sword for the Night's Watch," Jaime cracks, laughing as he always does with his son, happy, with the shadow of his first wife sneering at him from beside the throne. Take a loaf of bread from the kitchens before you go. Fare thee well."  
  
"Gods, imagine it," says Tommen, at once so warm and infectious and golden that he is the sun, half-shouting over the music yet conveying an intimacy, a consideration. His eyes crinkle, and when he clasps onto Jon's shoulder, Stranger above, Jon actually smiles. "Would our fathers have wanted this? Their sons going to war together beyond the Wall?"  
  
"I imagine so."  
  
Within earshot, simpering into his wine, Baelish smirks. Fathers, indeed, and they'll see who tells Sansa first, about Arya.  
  
"Would you?" Jon presses. "I can't take innocent men from the dungeons when they could rejoin their families at the hearings."  
  
"If King Joffrey intends to hold any hearings."  
  
"He will," says Tommen in an undertone to his uncle. "He's promised. A king's promises are law." Robert asked him before he died,  _Which king will you be?_ It's a bitter, bitter reality.  
  
"Certain kings' promises, perhaps."  
  
"If there was a precedence set by each subsequent son to join the Watch, its numbers would rise, yes?"  
  
"I can't secure that much support," says Jon, actually imagining it. "No self-respecting lord would consent."

"Just one son. The heir and then the spare." He shrugs without much bitterness, with all allusion to the wine he pretends to sip from his goblet. "I'll speak to Joff about it."

"He'll send you North for it."

"The King's wishes are my wishes," Tommen says. But in the same breath, as he turns as if he isn't directly gazing at whom he's indirectly been staring at all evening, "You should dance with her," he tells Jon before he can help it. "Sansa," he clarifies. "You should dance with her."

"I couldn't."  
  
"No one ever asks her, though."  
  
"Out of respect for King Joffrey," Jaime says, seeing Sansa as a shroud of Cersei:  proud, indignant, and bitter -- seeing Tommen gaze at him in that way that reminds him that his son is still a boy, impressionable and hurt, oh.  
  
"Out of fear. They'll shame a woman to spare themselves. They're not men."  
  
"Well," says Jon. "Gods forbid she declines."  
  
"She wouldn't; you're her brother! You're all the family she has left in this world."  
  
"Yes," agrees Jon, so quiet. He sees children playing as lords of castles in Winterfell's yards, Tommen and Arya seasons ago, and he could tell him, then, that his baby sister is alive and happy and warm and loved and safe. Gods, he could scream it, but peace can be a quiet thing -- no one ever gets exactly what they want.   
  
"Yes," mimics Uncle Jaime, smiling like sweet six and ten and a high of strawberry wine, "but. Rumors say Her Grace is in the family way. Notice she's wearing her gowns loose? Mother forbid it's a boy."  
  
"For her sake, let it be." An heir, one and done, and Joff can forget her.   
  
"Excuse me," Jon bids them, contemplative. "I'll see about that dance."  
  
.  
  
She refused.   
  
See, Her Grace, Queen Sansa of the Seven Kingdoms, Lady of Winterfell and Riverrun, and Warden of the North, she couldn't move. She could barely breathe, in fact, and each breath she drew felt like a gauntleted fist against her rib cage, felt like the splinters of her bones puncturing her lungs and fracturing her skin:  dislocating, the prettiest of purple bruises on her left side, oh.   
  
Trant broke her, and Sansa could hardly move. It pained her more to feign disinterest, though, to send Jon away when all she wanted was to fall into his arms and beg sanctuary, beg for the protection of the Wall.   
  
She couldn't move, and when Sandor came to escort her back to her tower, he carried her up the many steps like she were a child, like she'd be better off if she'd just quicken her womb already, "It's all he needs to feel secure. Give him a son."  
  
"I try," she whispered, faint. This morning, she'd woken to her monthly, another failed attempt to give the Kingdoms a child. When her lady's maid betrayed her, Trant had been brought in to see she retained proper motivation. "Will you stay by my door tonight, Ser?"  
  
It's her fragility that kills him. Literally devastates him, cripples him, and compromises him, and forces his spine to break. "I won't admit anyone," he promises gently. "Sleep safe tonight, little bird."

.  
  
"Bedridden? She's conceived, then?"  
  
"I'm afraid not," answers Cersei, like the notion is tiring. "A bout of melancholia. She's received a new prayer book and will mediate on its words. She'll consider how best to please Joffrey by conceiving his child and remaining a dutiful bride."  
  
"Such is the plight of women," he frowns. "What do the Old Gods say about conception?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"The Old Gods. She serves them as a Stark."  
  
Just that raise of her eyebrows, goodness, how that sharp inflection has him feeling like a chastised child, one who still experiences a painful lurch of panic when his mum sets her goblet down too forcefully or slams a door too harshly. It's trauma to his little boy bones, but he's seven and ten and tall and strong and gallant; he's a man, and half of him wants to cry each time Jaime and Brienne close a door gently, with tenderness.   
  
His life is kind words and love and praise, and his reprimands are lessons and fables and morals, lectures by his (foster) parents that are their stories and their experiences that continuously shape him into a better man. Just half a day with his mum, though, and the sky breaks. The hairs on his neck prickle.  
  
Her eyes are so forceful that he can't stand to see her, how her face twists and twists and twists. "The Old Gods aren't real. She's a pagan and a heathen. Don't entertain her delusions."  
  
"Actually, I think all deities are the same," he's foolish enough to venture. Across the room, Varys looks up from his scrolls. "Each deity becomes what the people require. Smooth seas, mothers, strangers, trees, fire."  
  
"Trees," repeats Cersei, cynical.  
  
"A foundation," he shrugs, so much like Jaime with the casualness that she hates him. "A force strong enough to withstand winter and persevere. Hope. I could believe it."  
  
"My son, the poet."  
  
"Hardly," he says in the same biting tone. Her compliment really wasn't.  
  
It's mocking. "Baby," she croons. He doesn't mean to turn his face away from her hand, but he does. "Don't you know that words will get you killed?"   
  
"Yes," he says. Four and ten years of innocence, and he's almost finished cowering -- almost. "Don't you?"  
  
"I've wondered the same as Lord Baratheon," Varys says, heavily powdered, shuffling, gesturing with his broad sleeves as he approaches this vie for dominance, this lion fight. "Why else would Greyjoys worship the sea if not necessity?"  
  
"Precisely," agrees Tommen, looking to his mum, "precisely."  
  
"You're not turning into a fanatic, are you?"  
  
"Grandfather ensured I would have an expensive education. So did Uncle Stannis. So does Uncle Tyrion. I'm immensely personable, you know," he half-quips, nearly autonomous.  
  
It's a memory of Jaime, and Cersei really struggles to breathe sometimes; sometimes, she hates herself.  
  
Had Jaime and Tommen stayed in King's Landing, the resemblance would have been eerily uncanny and suspicious. She's grateful the opportunity for her self-preservation has led to a joke that's spread from the Rock to the Landing. Young Ser Tommen has spent so much time with his uncle that they're beginning to look alike.

"Have your belongings been packed?"

"You wish me to leave already?" he wonders, and oh, gods, how dejected he thinks he sounds. "Mum, we've only just arrived."

"All the same," she says like it's honest supplication. "Your visit is causing more distraction than it's worth."

"Oh," he snarks, "that's very well. Joff is such a child, Mum; you should have taught him to play well with others. Can't he share?"

"Share?" she repeats. Betraying himself, now, he opens the book he's been pretending to read for an hour. "Share what?"

.

"I've found you a husband," he says to Willow.

"I declare," she gushes in mock delight, a Southron accent that drips like honey from her hands, flour on her apron.

Gendry's come in with the rain, with a pain in his chest, and he doesn't kiss Arya in public, no, because he's too prudish for that, but he moves in front of the fireplace so he can see her where she sits darning one of his tunics with her needle and thread; he presses his palm against her cheek and drags his fingers along her neck to feel her pulse, to tilt her face up to him. "Let's take a walk."

"I'll get mud on my shoes."

"Let's go, anyways."

"We'll get drenched, Gendry."

"Arry," he calls her, voice thick and old, hushed like the panicked dredges of years ago and danger and agony and love; oh, he was malleable even then to her small fists.

Just as he intended, the name catches her attention, and she's ever-much a cat, still, her mother, as she brushes her braid from her shoulder, stands so impossibly small in front of him. "Are you going to ask me to wed you again?"

He might actually stop breathing. "No. No, dear, I'm not."

"Oh," is all she says, quite succinctly.

"Today," he amends, trying to read her.

"That's fine."

"Right," he agrees, because yes -- when the time is right. "Is that fine, though?"

"Just, I've been giving it a lot of thought," she tells him with this deep breath, this certain tone.

Before she can begin more, though, he takes hold of her shoulders so delicately and bends his knees a bit while she presses up on her toes. "Take your time," he says, real soft, this tender part of him just so pliable to her, molded and shaped to her. "Have I told you today that I love you, Arya? Remember it."

"I'll do my best."

He squeezes her shoulders before he takes her hand, and then, there, he walks her to his forge, and he's glad of the rain. With her shawl around her head to keep her hair dry, he figures she's protected, at least -- in part.

Tommen does wait, though, just to be sure. He tries to see her through the rain just as Jon had described her through a brother's jilted perception, but  _no_ , he realizes with a displaced breath of regret, a strange sense of  _what if?_ that has him wondering how they might have lived. Arya Stark is beautiful, he thinks, and he is only sorry for a second that Sansa hadn't been as free as her, too. Instead of a soft blue gown of rich embroidery, oh, she's wearing coarse linen, now, and a piece of leather to bind her hair, and it's been ten, eleven, twelve years, yes. It's been a lifetime, and she's lived. He sees Sansa within her, and that's why he returns.

Arya, she just reads Sansa's letter, and she begins to cry.

 


End file.
